St. Vincent College, a small Benedictine college southeast of Pittsburgh, wanted to realign a two-lane state road serving the campus. But the state transportation department did not have the money.

So St. Vincent tried Washington instead. The college hired a professional lobbyist in 2004, and later that year, two paragraphs were tucked into federal appropriation bills with the help of Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., awarding $4 million solely for that project. College officials said the work would improve the safety and appearance of the road into the campus, which President Bush visited two days ago when he gave the college's commencement address.

Religious organizations have long competed for federal contracts to provide social services, and they have tried to influence Congress on matters of moral and social policy -- indeed, most major denominations have a presence in Washington to monitor such legislation. But an analysis of federal records shows that some religious organizations are also hiring professional lobbyists to pursue the narrowly tailored individual appropriations known as earmarks.

A New York Times analysis shows that the number of earmarks for religious organizations, while small compared with the overall number, have increased sharply in recent years. From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, the same analysis showed fewer than 60 earmarks for faith-based groups in the congressional session that covered 1997 and 1998.

Earmarks are individual federal grants that bypass the normal appropriations and competitive-bidding procedures. They have been blamed for feeding the budget deficit and have figured in several Capitol Hill bribery scandals, prompting recent calls for reform from White House and congressional leaders.

They are distinct from the competitive, peer-reviewed grants that have traditionally been used by religious institutions and charities to obtain financing for social services.

Sometimes the earmarks benefited programs aimed at helping others. There have been numerous earmarks totaling $5.4 million for World Vision, the global humanitarian ministry, to conduct job training, youth mentoring and gang prevention programs.

But many of the earmarks address the prosaic institutional needs of some specific religious group.

For instance, there are earmarks giving the Mormon Church control of two parcels of federal land of historic significance to the church, transferring 10 acres of federal forest land to a small church in Florida, allowing a historic church surrounded by a federal park in Ohio to use public land to expand its parking space, and handing several acres of government land over to a Catholic college in New Hampshire.

James Winkler, who has represented the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society since 2000, says he fears that the pursuit of earmarks could muffle religion's moral voice. "For example, we've opposed the war since day one," he said. "But what if an earmark benefiting us -- money for a Methodist seminary, perhaps -- is attached to the supplemental appropriation for the war? You can see how very serious moral conflicts could arise."

The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals, said while religious organizations should be able to compete for federal money, such groups "shouldn't do that through earmarks." He explained, "As good stewards of the public trust, we have to be transparent and above board -- and earmarks are not transparent or above board."

And, constitutional lawyers point out, because the First Amendment prohibits direct government financing of religious activities, earmarks that steer money to religious groups pose constitutional risks. Indeed, several faith-based earmarks were successfully challenged as unconstitutional long after Congress approved them.

Paul Marcone, a lobbyist and former Capitol Hill staff member who specializes in getting earmarks for nonprofit clients, disputes the notion that religious groups should not pursue them.

"Despite what the critics say, there is far more transparency in earmarks than in the discretionary grant process," Marcone said. "It's the difference between unelected bureaucrats using a peer-review process and an elected member of Congress."

The lobbying firm to which dozens of religious organizations have turned is Marcone's former employer, the Russ Reid Co., based in Pasadena. Since 1964, Russ Reid has provided direct-mail and other fundraising services to some of the nation's largest charities, like World Vision and Habitat for Humanity.

But it also maintains a government relations office in Washington, directed by Mark McIntyre, a former congressional press secretary and a vice presidential speechwriter in the Reagan administration. "If your focus is on how faith-based organizations are getting earmarks, I'm your guy," McIntyre said in a telephone conversation last month. But the company subsequently canceled an interview with McIntyre and declined to comment further about his work.

Online resources

An interactive database of almost 900 faith-based earmarks can be found at: